Buffoons and those with gastric bands best avoid this restaurant...

LET’S get one thing straight: comments here are not designed to offend.
I eat out frequently in Barnstaple at perfectly respectable places. Their menus are fine, the ambience good, service generally warm and efficient. But – and there’s the rub – I rarely find anything on the menus exciting or challenging. The spare tyre around my middle attests to the fact that I like to eat. I devour cookbooks like ladies of a certain inclination do Catherine Cookson novels. And I spend a disproportionate amount of time in the kitchen.
But in more than four years I can’t recall walking into a restaurant in Barnstaple and seeing things on the menu that simultaneously aroused my curiosity and made me salivate.The minute I opened the menu at The Old Custom House I knew it was either going to be exceptional or – apologies for the technical French – cack.
It was lunchtime so we chose from the tapas menu. Tiger prawns came huge and grilled, with a light coating of sea salt, garlic and olive oil and accompanied by a bowl of fruity mayonnaise drizzled with parsley oil.
The rare-as-requested slices of local rump steak were served in a deep, rich sauce, heaped with different wild mushrooms and peppers.
My least favourite was the home-made spaghetti in a tomato sauce with parmesan. It was good, but personally I prefer the al dente resistance of dried spaghetti with a sauce like this. But this is verging on the churlish.
The crab and clam risotto, well that would have been a treat if only because it’s the first time I’ve been able to eat fresh clams in a Barnstaple restaurant. But it was fantastic, loaded with shellfish flavour.
We reluctantly agreed to see the desserts menu – in the name of research, you understand – and, when I asked whether the puds were also tapas style I was offered the option of a dessert plate to share. Who wouldn’t? Only a buffoon or someone fitted with a gastric band.
What came was a fragrant panoply of fresh ice creams (plural), different types of biscuit, lemon cream desserts with a liquid caramel top and a much appreciated chocolate fix which came in the form of a hot chocolate pud with a gooey centre. Just what the doctor ordered me to avoid.
Lovely.
The Old Custom House is a rare treat of a restaurant. The food oozes classy ingredients, freshness, imagination.
Chef/patron James Duckett’s years in Spain come through loud and clear.It only remains for North Devon to support him: anybody interested in food owes it to themselves to ensure the new Old Custom House is successful and thrives for us all to enjoy.
The Old Custom House, The Strand, Barnstaple, Tel 01271 370123.
Tapas for two including extravagant desserts, soft drinks and coffee cost £31.60.

Of whiting, mackerel and anorexic penguins

HA! I got one. I finally got to see my rod tip bend, I struck on the rod and started reeling in.
Sadly it was so small I could barely feel it wriggling on the end. It was a whiting. I have nothing against whiting except the fact that there's not much flesh on the buggers. They're skinny little beasts.
Last time I bought one it was the size of a big bass that would have fed four. It hung from of each end of my big roasting tin, that I'd packed with sliced potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, stock and saffron. But when I got it out of the oven and came to dishing it up to my wife and in-laws, there wasn't enough to feed an anorexic penguin, let along the four of us.
So when I brought my very first catch in from just outside the harbour at Ilfracombe at 6am on Sunday morning, I thought it was a mackerel. I've nothing against mackerel - a fine eating fish - and would have been pleased to land one - despite the fact my sister and I landed 50 on a one-hour boat trip around Lyme Bay a few years back. But I would gladly have landed and eaten it, as my first fish.
Sadly, though, it was a mackerel-sized whiting and I put it right back in the drink.
I wasn't alone, however, and I just had to tell two guys who were there fishing with peeler crab and squid (and less success than me) that I'd just caught my first fish in more than a year. What a child I am...
So my duck is broken, I am no longer a sea-angling virgin.
Let's see what the future brings!

Instow Schminstow

Fishable at low and high tides, Instow, or so I'd heard. So I went there on two evenings this week, as it's relatively close to home and involves neither scrambling over rocks nor losing loads of tackle on rocks.
I didn't lose any tackle, that much is true. Nor did I have to do anything in the way of scrambling.
But then again I'd have had as little scrambling to do, have lost as little tackle and actually have caught as many fish had I simply gone a hundred yards up the road and cast my line in an empty field on the outskirts of my village. Bleeding useless is what my two evening sorties to Instow were last week.
For bait I tried mackerel and I tried mussels, both of which should be relatively attractive to fish in the estuary. I tried size 4/0 hooks and size 2 hooks. I tried different weights and lengths of cast. I tried near the rocks by the cricket ground and I tried right into the Torridge estuary on the other side of the beach.
It's all very well, and I quite enjoyed my evening on the beach and didn't mind the fact I didn't get home until 1.30am on Saturday. But I would really like to catch something soon. I'm in half a mind to start praying for fish. And I'm an athiest...
Any suggestions on a postcard, in an email, as a comment please...

Stewing over those dogfish

Dogfish haven't got the very best reputation as an eating fish, although actually their lack of reputation is undeserved. Huss or rock salmon has been on chippy menus for decades, just not as dogfish.
I first ate it myself a few years ago after reading Rick Stein's English Seafood Cookery, in which he suggests, if my memory serves me correctly, grilling it in a Parmesan/breadcrumb crust and then serving it with a thinned garlic-mayonnaise sauce. Actually it was lovely like that, but I got put off by a piece of rank dogfish I'd bought reduced in a Taunton supermarket.
According to Hugh Double-Barrelled all members of the shark family have urea in their blood to help them with the whole living in seawater business, so it's important to bleed them just as you've killed them and while their heart is still beating. I can't imagine this happens on an industrial fishing scale, and this piece of dogfish did smell like something that might consist largely of urea. Yuch. The rest I will leave to your imagination, but suffice to say the dogfish ended up in the bin.
Anyway, this episode had put me off until now, when I had that beautiful fish, caught myself, bled, transferred straight to a coolbox and then skinned and filleted by my own fair hand in my kitchen.
HFW suggests making goujons and deep-frying them, serving them with a home-made tartare sauce. I have absolutely no that these would be fantastic, however I am making a serious effort to be less of a fat boy these days, so I needed a lower-calorie solution.
As dogfish does actually have a god white flesh, I decided to opt for a robust stew with plenty of saffron and garlic, to give the taste of the dogfish a run for its money.
The sauce is a fairly classic fish sauce - ingredients used for all kinds of fish soups and stews in differing quantities. I chopped up a bulb of fennel, a couple of celery stalks, a large onion, the white of one leek and three or four cloves of garlic, and a red pepper, and just softened them in olive oil in a large pan on top of the oven until they were very soft but not coloured. Next to go in was a couple of peelings of orange peel, chopped finely. Then I put in a really good load of black pepper and a good pinch of saffron, gave it a stir and then threw in a glug of the white wine I happened to be drinking at the time.
I then chopped up about a pound of tomatoes I had fresh - but that were getting a bit soft for eating raw - and added those along with a tin of the chopped plum variety. I chucked in a couple of fresh, torn bay leaves
Then I left that to cook down for a good half hour or 40 minutes.
Once the sauce was well broken down I added the dogfish, which I had cut into bite-sized morsels, stirred, put the lid back on and gave it another five minutes or so until the fish became translucent. And that was it. It was really good, served with just some brown rice, although had I not been watching my waistline I might have gone down the toasts and rouille/ aioli route, which goes so well with this type of fish stew...
My only regrets were that I had not brought more dogfish home. The meat froze OK (it was a little soft, but I might have overcooked it slightly), and this was a fine way of serving it.
Guess now I'll have to go and catch some more... If indeed I can.

A duck broken. Well nearly.

They are, as they say, like buses. I've caught nothing for more than a year and then suddenly I'm catching more than I can actually remember in one outing, and throwing most of them back as to do otherwise would seem greedy - despite the fact that I do fish with the specific intention of eating my prey.
It was due to be a dismal morning, with winds blowing and waves chopping, and me and my mate had arranged to go out with Clovelly harbourmaster, lifeboatman, and fisherman, Stephen Perham. I was going straight from my sister's hours in Tiverton, where we'd been the night before, and had with me my wellies, big thick coat, waterproof hat... you know the score.
So I was delighted when I dropped down towards the coast at Appledore to pick up Matt that the clouds parted and the sun began to beat down on us.
Off we headed to Clovelly, where Stephen had been following a sponsored swim from Bucks Mills in his boat before we arrived.
We headed off in Neptune - a beautiful 50-year-old hand-built wooden boat that had previously belonged to Stephen's father - and first of all tried for some mackerel using feathers and lines.
The visibility was pretty damn poor and had been for several days, so whether the mackerel were there and couldn't see the lures or whether they had cleared off back out into deeper water I don't know. But not being able to catch a mackerel in Westcountry waters in the summer is never a great sign...
So we then moved on to a spot for dogfish and dropped down some hooks baited with mackerel and we waited.
And then I got my first bite, brought it up and there was the first of the day's many lesser spotted dogfish.
It's all very well to be very blase and cool about it now, but actually I was over the moon, ecstatic to catch something after about a year of trying. Fishermen can be quite disparaging about doggies, because they are the indestructible rodents of the seabed, but not us. tempting as it was to keep my first fish ever off the North Devon coast, I decided he looked a bit on the small side so threw him back. But I needn't have worried - there were plenty more to come.
I had felt good about the possibility of catching stuff and, much to the amusement of my wife, sister and brother-in-law, had taken along a cool box and several ice packs to keep my catch cool. Of course they all thought that was hilarious. The man who had never caught anything taking a big box along for my non-existent catch - a bit like buying a birthday present for an imaginary friend.
Anyway, I must have caught at least 10 LSDs and one bull huss, so that was cool and great fun.
After a while we got really contemptuous of the doggies and decided to go for something else. We moved over a muddy section of seabed and started using strips, instead of chunks, of mackerel for bait. The hope was that we would catch a thornback ray or something. But we didn't. Just more dogfish.
Fair play to Stephen Perham, he's a really friendly and interesting bloke and we enjoyed our morning out with him. Anybody wanting to arrange a trip can give him a call on 01237 431761. We'll certainly be keen to arrange another outing with him.
So, finally I've caught something - but not from the beach and not on my own rod and tackle. So my quest continues - my duck kind of broken but, if I'm honest, I won't be happy until I get one on my own kit.

F's for feather

You'd have thought I could at least manage to catch a bleeding mackerel. In fact you'd think I'd be able to catch a mackerel of some kind, bleeding or not.
But no, it would appear I could not.
My plan was to go to Westward Ho! for high tide and just use the feathers and my beachcaster. But, as can happen with a mid-morning weekend fishing trip, it turned into a family outing; Westward Ho! turned into Instow; and beachcaster turned into spinning rod.
I wasn't as hopeful about fishing in the estuary, but nevertheless I was undeterred. It was a beautiful day and high tide after all, so surely something would go for one of the lures. I used a set of three feathers and then looped on a set of four silver things supposed to look like shrimps...
I spend a good hour up to my waist in it, figuring that although it was the estuary if I could cast far enough out it would be OK.
But of course it wasn't.
Total equipment failure. The handle dropped off my reel. Fortunately I managed to locate it on the seabed and took it home, where I managed to fix it back on with the help of some thick copper wire.
Getting an ice cream was about as near as I was going to come to catching a fish. You're right - it is not even close.

Bit of catching up to do

I've been busy exposing my drinking habits to a wider audience, so I thought I'd take this blog off thisisnorthdevon lest you should get fed up of my grinning mug...
Anyway, now I'm back, and I didn't let the booze diary get in the way of my fishing.
A night at Woolacombe gave me loads of bites, bait that was gradually getting gnawed away, but nothing to reel in. To be honest the tides were all wrong when I went. I'd just missed high tide and spent my evening walking ever further down the beach. Come the end it was low tide, 2am and I was utterly soaked. I'd gone out in my wellies but in my efforts to cast out a decent distance had got them waterlogged - and once your feet are wet there's little point in trying to stay dry. So I just went out to waist height and got drenched.
If I was really serious I guess I wouldn't have gone - but actually I would always prefer to spend a beautiful evening out of doors and doing something than having an early night or watching the box. Sometimes it really isn't about what you catch. Easy for me to say!
I really improved my casting over the course of the night, must have almost doubled the distance I was doing by trying some different techniques and by concentrating on how I was holding the rod. But of course it counted for nowt.
I wasn't entirely alone all evening. Just after 1am a pair of drunk teenagers came to play near me. They've got two miles of beach and where do they come? Five sodding yards away to have a little dance in the waves. One of them was of course a hoodie and, as I know them to be armed and dangerous, I kept an eye on where they were all all times in case they mugged me for my old, refrozen squid box...
The fish, however, just didn't want to come and play with me, so I finally left, damp but no more dejected than usual...